Twitch gamers will stream from the White House next week

Professor aims to create 'shared moment' using Tetris and a skyscraper

Humans are social creatures yet technology often serves to isolate us. Professor Frank Lee believes it can also be used to bring us together.

The footage above captures a recent multiplayer game of Tetris playing out across the sides of the 29-story-tall Cira Centre in Philadelphia. Randomly selected players took turns manipulating and dropping tetrominoes, with their actions displayed via LED lights attached to the building. From that towering vantage, the game was visible to people across the city and for that brief period, the game became what Professor Lee calls a "social beacon" for the citizens of Philadelphia.

Speaking to Polygon, Professor Lee also explains that he hopes this event will encourage people toward coding. "Coding is going to be so important in our future," Lee said. "Certainly you have a lot of people saying that as well, but this will be a fun way to engage students who might have never thought about going into programming."

"[I want] to use this as a platform to try to reach those groups and those students to think about programming as a very creative endeavor."